Monday, November 19, 2012

The next few weeks will see a lot of temporary insanity on
the issue of the Middle East. Let’s hope that ends in a few weeks. In the
meantime, here are some rather unmeasured words against both sides of the
irrationality which will be engendered about this war in the next few weeks. If
enough people don’t say them, they will control discourse about Israel. And if
they do, this war will never end.

To the excessively pro-Palestine
crowd: No, it’s not anti-semitic to criticize Israel. Israel is deserving
of much criticism, and routinely gets more of it than any other country in the
world. It is, however, anti-semitic to criticize Israel while ignoring far
worse human rights violations around the world. If you are inflamed by Israel’s
treatment of Palestinians, then why weren't you more inflamed about the state sponsored murders in Sudan, Somalia, Burundi, Iraq, Algeria, Angola, Ethiopia, Kosovo, Bosnia, Algeria, Syria, Russia, Myanmar, Liberia, Rwanda, Uganda, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Congo, Zaire, China, Indonesia, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Turkey and North Korea? In the last twenty-five years, all of these countries have been responsible for more state-sponsored murder than Israel, sometimes tens or hundreds of thousands more; or the hundreds of state-created refugee crises over the last sixty-five years that are at least as great as the badness Israel visits on the Palestinians? To say that is not tantamount to saying that the Palestinian
cause should be ignored, or that Israel should not be criticized. It merely
says that far worse humanitarian crises are being ignored because the larger public
insists on focusing on this one humanitarian crisis to the exclusion far worse
ones all over the world. Of all these deserving humanitarian causes, it’s the
Palestinian cause that’s the greatest rallying cry for so many people of our
generation who fancy themselves progressives.

Why is this?

Because unlike all of these other causes, the Palestinian
Authority and Hamas have successfully waged a violent and bloody war – not only against
Israel but also against its own people; the ratio of non-judicial murders among
Palestinians between the Israeli government and the Palestinian government(s)
is roughly 1-to-1, and that ratio does not count the number of civilians which
Palestinian governments have put into harm’s way by making them into human
shields against Israeli fire (and if you’re wondering how so many Palestinians
who are killed are children, that’s because it is Hamas’s policy to place rocket
launchers, weapons depots, and military encampments in places where schools are
used for cover - a strategy they learned from Fatah and the Palestinian Authority). All throughout its history, Israel’s human rights violations
are smaller than those of their neighbors, not only towards Israel, but towards
their own people. All throughout it history, Israel has been faced with
neighbors whose governments have genocidal intentions – and make no mistake,
many members of every Islamist and pan-Arabist government have always wanted to
wipe out every Jew in Israel and pursue that goal to this day. And yet the
world pretends that if Israel changes its policies, so will the regimes who
wish it dead.

All of this wouldn’t matter though if the Palestinians had a
Nelson Mandela as their historic leader rather than Yassir Arafat. Had they a
Mandela who persuaded them to forswear violence, the morality of their cause would
be unimpeachable, and who knows? They might have had a state thirty years ago
without their government fashioning their people as the world’s cause célèbre with pictures of dead
children in place of infrastructure, and permanent refugee camps in place of
investment. Instead, the Palestinian cause has drawn out as many of the worst
progressive traditions as the campaign against South African apartheid brought
out the best. If you want to be among people who’s idea of changing the world
is fashionable sloganeering, the desire to be seen taking a stand rather than
implementing results; believing that religious fanatics will listen to reason, and
magical thinking that totalitarians will renounce violence if their demands are
met; then take up the Palestinian cause. You will never have to do a day of
serious work for peace in your life. And if you want your particular Middle
East cause to be taken seriously by world opinion, the only way is to provoke
Israel into joining the opposing side.

Israel’s history has had instances of every type of leader:
from great men to war criminals. Within its ranks are every type of good and
bad policy, and every type of good and bad soldier. Yet most criticism of
Israel has always remained at the same vituperative level from its inception to
the present day and shall remain so well beyond. Such criticism has absolutely
nothing to do with Israel’s record of action. There can only be one explanation
for this, and that is a combination of the anti-semitism of Israel’s enemies and
with the prominence of Jewish suffering in modern Western history forms a
noxious brew that makes the idea of Jewish moral failure a particularly sexy
story in the modern historical narrative, and one which makes Israel a cause
for protest beyond any other country in the world. Thanks to the unending
Jewish history of suffering, Israel is now the Jew among nations, held to a
standard of accountability to which no other country in the world would ever be
held. Believing that Israel ought to be prevented from engaging in operations
to keep its citizens safe is the racism of the anti-racists. Believing that
Palestinians ought to have a state at all costs and at the expense of another
country’s security is the nationalism of the anti-nationalists. Therefore, if
you are more interested in disapproving of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians rather
than countries who do far worse things to those they oppress, you are not a
serious person, and the fact that other people take you seriously is a tragedy
for the world. And even if you don’t think of yourself as an anti-semite, history will.

2 comments:

Very well written, thoughtful, moderate, and right on. You've framed this in a way that is more nuanced that the voices on either side honestly usually do. I have criticized Israel for many things in the past and present mostly because I believe that they often undermine their own cause by taking fair retaliation a step too far and do very little to denounce the crazy voices in their own ranks. Yes, the world pays too much attention to this compared to other causes, but Israel often HANDS them material, and that destroys international consensus I think they otherwise could build to support their cause. You're right about Palestinian leadership and it's tragic, but unfortunately at this juncture I don't see leadership on either side that is serious about wanting peace. Unfortunately the current dynamic serves both sides politically, and that's a real shame.